Channel 7 UPS Installation

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Wednesday, 28November2012

The very first Cat® Flywheel Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) sold by Energy Power Systems Australia (EPSA) is still working around the clock at the Seven Network. In fact, Paul Moller, the Building Services and Facilities Manager, couldn’t be happier. In fact, Paul Moller, the Building Services and Facilities Manager, couldn’t be happier.

“In the nine years it’s been operating, our Cat Flywheel UPS unit has clocked up 78,912 hours and saved my butt 3,518 times by responding to events,” Paul told us. “What’s more, in all those years the unit has only ever needed just one temperature probe replaced.”

This trouble-free operation is even more remarkable given that scheduled servicing by Cat dealer WesTrac is required only once every four years.

This Cat Flywheel UPS powers the data room at Seven Network’s corporate office in Pyrmont, Sydney. As Paul explained: “If our data room ever goes down, we lose productivity and connectivity with all sister systems, including our telephones, right across the country. It also powers all IT at our corporate office, including the 34 edit suites where we package our promos daily. In the event of a power failure, we know the flywheel will continue to spin for the 14 seconds it takes the Cat stand-by generator to start.”

Paul credits the system’s reliability to the way the unit is manufactured by Caterpillar.

In 2003, EPSA and Caterpillar invited Paul to visit the assembly line in Austin, Texas. “It was like a Formula One workshop,” Paul recalled.

“You could see that a lot of thought had gone into the production process to ensure quality control; this is why these Cat UPS systems work so well,” Paul added.

In addition to its quality performance, the Cat Flywheel UPS system is also cost efficient. As EPSA’s Greg Conrad, the UPS Business Development Manager, said: “This system doesn’t use much power to run, so it’s very ‘green’. It doesn’t need special cooling like batterytype units. It doesn’t even take up much room, so you save on space as well.” Paul couldn’t agree more.

“In fact its actual footprint is about three or four times less than the static systems being used in other parts of the network and, as for the vibration, when I touch the unit, I cannot feel it running at all,” Paul added.

Even so, for all these benefits, and there are plenty of them, it’s the software that appeals most of all to Paul. “It’s the best, most userfriendly software for a machine I’ve ever seen. I can dial in from home, on the side of the road, or even overseas and it tells me what I need to know in real time, across some 50 to 60 monitoring points.”

So, next time you’re sitting at home and you see a Channel 7 promo, you can be sure that it was backed up safely by this Cat Flywheel UPS unit, quietly working non-stop in the Network’s office.